This Week in Politics: No Quick Fix for Energy Crisis

analyze – The government must take steps to address the energy crisis, and explaining its solutions takes up most of the time Press conference after the cabinet meeting on Monday.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon came along with Energy Minister Simeon Brown and RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop to help.

in short, Luxon said there was no reason New Zealand couldn’t have a secure renewable energy supply and his government had a plan to make it happen..

Its basic content is to quickly lift the ban on oil and gas exploration, review electricity market rules to make it easier to build renewable energy projects, relax restrictions on power companies owning power generation facilities, and import liquefied natural gas (LNG).

The current power shortages are caused by low hydro lake levels and a drop in natural gas production, which has led to higher industrial power prices and two North Island factories saying they can no longer operate.

The electricity market is extremely complex and spot prices are highly volatile, which is obviously not a good thing, but there is no quick fix.

Brown said the government’s focus would be on the regulatory regime for the market and whether competitive and affordable prices were being offered.

There is no shortage of blame for the crisis.

“The reality is if we hadn’t banned oil and gas we wouldn’t have to be here,” Luxon was quoted as saying by RNZ.

This was done by former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in her “Nuclear Moment” speech, which was a huge surprise at the time.

Luxon called it a “bumper sticker policy” that didn’t consider the consequences.

Brown said the ban had a “significant impact” on exploration, while Luxon said it had a “chilling effect” on anyone wanting to search for gas deposits.

It all makes sense. Finding more gas would be great. But there is no guarantee of finding it, and it will take a long time.

According to the Greens, the previous discovery took 16 years to actually go into production.

Labour doesn’t like being blamed, leadership Chris Hipkins tries to turn this around.

“New Zealand currently has a huge amount of approved renewable electricity available for construction, but the big electricity retailers are choosing not to build it because it is in their commercial interest to keep energy scarce and maximise profits,” he said.

“If you really want to start assigning accountability, you can go back to 2012, when the mixed ownership model was first introduced.”

Greens shocked by co-leader Chloe Swarbrick’s decision Wrote an article published by The Herald.

In it, she accused the government of “manipulating the country” and “weaponizing the current crisis” to justify the continued use of fossil fuels.

“The fossil fuel-powered energy system is very good for corporate profits and shareholder dividends,” she said.

“There are currently 33 wind and solar projects approved and awaiting construction. These projects are not being built because huge profits for shareholders do not come from resilient renewable energy and low energy bills for ordinary people.”

Like Hipkins, Swarbrick said National had contributed to the crisis by privatising Contact Energy and then part-privatising Genesis, Mercury and Meridian.

“Over the next 10 years, these energy companies paid out $11 billion in shareholder dividends, which is two and a half times what they spent on energy production, infrastructure, maintenance and upgrades,” she said.

The media focus is on the plan to import liquefied natural gas because it will actually happen and Brown said the port facilities needed to import liquefied natural gas will be ready by winter 2026.

Ministers say it is far better than coal and produces fewer emissions.

However, even this aspect of the plan has been questioned.

“Is coal really ‘twice as bad’ as natural gas?” This is the headline of a report from Radio New Zealand (RNZ).

The report quoted Ralph Sims, professor of sustainable energy at Massey University, as saying that when natural gas is extracted, cooled, stored and transported in the form of liquefied natural gas, any climate benefits compared to burning coal will disappear.

The Prime Minister’s attack on Parliament had interesting consequences this week.

At the end of last week, Luxon told mayors and councillors at the Local Government New Zealand annual conference “the party is over”.

“The central government focuses on must-haves rather than nice-to-haves, and we hope local governments will do the same,” he said.

Luxon spoke of the “long list of disruptions and experiments” that councils had undertaken at great expense and told them to get back to basics – rubbish, pipes and potholes.

Local Government Minister Simeon Brown arrived and said steps would be taken.

He warned them that unless they returned to basics and stopped spending money on nice things, they would suffer a similar fate as the beneficiaries who did not attend job interviews and would also be restricted in their spending on luxury items. The Herald.

The media saw the truth of the matter. Luxon’s speech was not understood by the mayor and councillors. His real audience was taxpayers across the country who were facing a sharp tax increase.

“It’s very good politics,” he said. Claire Trevitt, political editor of The Herald.

“Luxon didn’t bother to sugarcoat it because his audience wasn’t the people in the room.”

Even worse for Luxon, Mr Trevett said, were the headlines about how rising interest rates had eaten into the government’s much-vaunted tax cuts.

The Herald Columnist Simon Wilson had a similar take on Luxon’s comments.

“They are an easy target … it’s like a turtle in a jar for the prime minister,” he said.

Wilson noted Brown’s comment that “no more funds be diverted to build unnecessary bike lanes and speed bumps.”

“I attended the meeting and witnessed some pretty frustrating emotions,” Wilson said.

“At the moment councils are struggling with delays in infrastructure spending, particularly in the areas of water and transport.

“Many are still struggling to overcome the last round of climate-related disasters, and everyone is worried about how to prepare for next year.”

Wilson quoted the reaction of Central Hawke’s Bay Mayor Alex Walker: “It’s a fairly simplistic narrative that targets the demands for minimum standards.”

Summarizing the responses, Trevitt said Luxon was called “rude” and “arrogant.”

“Labor leader Chris Hipkins got a little personal in referring to Luxon’s wealth, saying it was all very well for people who could afford swimming pools and books, but if they couldn’t, it wasn’t so good,” she said.

In case anyone missed this, Stuff ran a cartoon showing Luxon lying in a fenced private pool, saying “optional pools aren’t for everyone”, while children outside the fence ask to use his pool because theirs is closed.

One commentator who doesn’t follow the crowd is Newstalk ZB’s Heather du Plessis-Allan.

She said: “Luxon is simply saying what many taxpayers themselves are saying – that councils should stick to the basics … they should stop with the weird fancies and luxuries.”

“But what Luxon probably didn’t expect was that the mayor and councilmen would hand him victory so easily that they immediately started complaining like spoiled children who took something out of their dad’s wallet when no one was watching.”

She said when Luxon walked into the room he felt the vibe of the country’s taxpayers.

“He knows he’s picking a fight he has a good chance of winning. It’s surprising how out of touch the mayor and councillors are with reality. But it’s not surprising, is it?”

Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau, She expressed her views in an article published by Stuff.

She said: “The government’s approach is not only offensive and wrong, it also demonstrates government overreach in local decision-making and that our communities will be able to influence future decisions they voted for.”

Vano said she felt strongly that the speech was a missed opportunity to discuss how to share solutions to problems. Instead, Luxon “put people down.”

“It’s clear the prime minister wants to run our country like a business. But we are not a business, we are a community with community-related needs,” she said.

A Stuff headline asked: “Where’s Chippy?”the article shows an interesting side of the Labour leader.

He has been less prominent recently, as explored in this article by Kelly Dennett and Anna White.

“While Labour has very slowly stepped up its fightback, there is a sense that it has lost its mojo, with commentators describing it either as having lost its voice or as needing to up the ante,” the article said.

Hipkins said he was not criticising for the sake of criticising.

“Generally speaking, I don’t like criticising other politicians’ personalities and styles and so on, because that doesn’t fit with my character,” he said.

“I tend to focus on being the best person, the best politician, the best leader…I don’t want us to be critical of each other, I want us to be constructive and supportive.”

He won’t be drawn to policy because it may not come until next year, especially tax policy.

“I think we need to have a different tax policy before the next election,” Hipkins said. “I won’t reveal exactly what that will look like.”

The article also quoted political science professor Richard Shaw as saying Hipkins needed to come up with a clear policy because Labour’s position was “very unclear”.

Hipkins needs a story to tell — “both about himself and about the party he leads, which will be different to the one he inherits from Ardern and the one he will face in 2026.”

Shaw said that, in a way, Hipkins’ attitude was correct.

“If you try to constantly insert yourself into the political narrative, then you start to look a little bit like you need political help, and that’s a risk,” he said.

“The structure of the current government has enough underlying political fault lines that could be forced open by events and circumstances that Hipkins doesn’t really need to go looking for holes.”

Columnist Janet Wilson expressed some more forthright views on Hipkins.

“The opposition now is essentially the same party that was in power last October,” she said.

“Hipkins should know that politics is a game of risk and reward, and those unwilling to take risks are doomed to obscurity, while pinning your hopes on the failure of another party without making any relevant changes to your own is a surefire way to electoral defeat.”

Wilson said Labour had time before 2026 to make those changes, “but not with Hipkins at the helm because as prime minister in 2023 he is the embodiment of Labour’s failure.”

*Peter Wilson is a life member of the parliamentary press bench, having been NZPA’s political editor for 22 years and NZ Newswire’s parliamentary bureau chief for seven years.